If you are curious about atheism, here is the least painless way I can think of to learn. I recommend following this order.
- Take a day, make it a Sunday if you are a Christian, and decide that you will be an atheist for that day. Does it feel radically different? Do you feel guilty? Why?
- You may have an extra hour to yourself on your atheism day so watch a video from Julia Sweeney, Letting go of God. You can find segments of this talk on YouTube and you can purchase the entire show from The Skeptic Society.
- Take a look at this blog for the article from March 8, 2019. It has a lot of biblical quotes. If you have a bible, even if it is a different version, you should be able to find them and you can decide for yourself if I have taken excessive liberties.
- Go to YouTube and do a search for the George Hrab song “God is not great”. Even better, go to iTunes and search “God is not great Hrab”. I would encourage buying the versions from the album Trebuchet or 21812. But even previewing the song would be fun.
- There are a number of atheistic video clips on YouTube. Here is one by the late Christopher Hitchens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Ky2J5b9ZI
- Ready for another song? Check out Shelley Segal’s An Atheist Album on YouTube or iTunes. Start with the song Saved.
- There was some discussion a few years ago about the 4 Horsemen of atheism. They are Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and the late Christopher Hitchens. But you might not be ready for everything by this group. Consider instead The Portable Atheist edited by Hitchens and read some of the shorter articles such as the ones by Penn Jillette (2 pages), Thomas Hardy (3 pages), Michael Shermer (3 pages), Charles Darwin (4 pages), Salman Rushdie (4 pages), H.L. Mencken (4 pages), Daniel Dennett (5 pages), and then some longer articles by Victor Stenger, Elizabeth Anderson, Sam Harris, Carl Sagan, and Richard Dawkins. Particularly for women I would recommend a book edited by Dr. Karen Garst Women Beyond Belief.
- You find a list of atheist celebrities at http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/Main_Page. So what? Well, you can take almost any of the atheist celebrities and add the word “religion” and do a YouTube or other internet search engine and with luck you will at least be entertained. This is not to say that from any such list you won’t find some people you don’t like or don’t agree with.
- Are you still a believer because you are holding out hope for a heaven? I haven’t heard a description of the afterlife that doesn’t sound like hell just as soon as you add the word “forever”. Meanwhile, check out George Hrab’s song “Heaven Must Be Boring”.
